


Musketeer Garrison, 24 October 1636

by Anima Nightmate (faithhope)



Series: All For One and, well, you know the rest... [21]
Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: (in a box), Ambition, Canon Compliant, Canon Era, Class Issues, Correspondence, Education, Embedded Images, Franco-Spanish War, Gen, Got Wood, Historical References, Metaphors, Military Training, Military Uniforms, Sex Toys, Surprise Gift, Teaching, That Inappropriate Friend, Training, Uniforms, War, Wartime
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-29
Updated: 2018-09-30
Packaged: 2019-07-18 16:32:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16122455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faithhope/pseuds/Anima%20Nightmate
Summary: “Right,” she says, briskly. “Take it off.”“Er…!”“The badge,” she says, slow and deliberate, nodding towards it for good measure.“Oh. Right.”The cadet scrabbles it off his arm as she stands, face impassive, hands on hips, eyebrows flicking every so often. She flashes, momentarily, to where she learned this stance, and frowns herself steady again. No need for that.He holds it out to her.“This may not seem important to you,” she says, “but this is more than just us being fussy about the uniform. You represent the Musketeers and all that that stands for. It’s more than just shooting or swordplay or guarding. It’s about a particular type of honour. You understand me?”“Yes, Madame.”“Right. And it’s more than that again,” she says, warming to her theme, reaching to take it off him. “It’s about the fundamentals of…” she shakes it at him “of materials.”He frowns.*Another installment in the long series of wartime correspondence (and other pieces based around the black box that is the Musketeers during the Spanish War).





	1. Mess

It takes her a little while to place the handwriting on the letter tucked into the twine of the parcel but, once she does, it’s like stepping back in time to that library, surrounded by the kind of richness she never thought she’d come to take for granted.

The parcel has been on a couple of adventures before reaching her, first to the Palace, then on via a friendly guard and into the hands of this blushing, stumbling cadet, blue cloth tied proud and wrong on his arm.

She takes it from him with thanks, and lays it down on the mess table. First things first. “Who tied that?”

He gawps.

She points, mouth flat, eyebrows raised.

“Er, I did, um, Madame…”

“D’Artagnan,” she reminds him.

“Madame d… d’Artagnan.” No wonder he stumbles – even now, a year on, she’s none too used to it herself. And no doubt he’s already heard tales of her absent husband’s prowess, growing taller by the day.

“Right,” she says, briskly. “Take it off.”

“Er…!”

“ _The badge_ ,” she says, slow and deliberate, nodding towards it for good measure.

“Oh. Right.”

He scrabbles it off as she stands, face impassive, hands on hips, eyebrows flicking every so often. She flashes, momentarily, to where she learned this stance, and frowns herself steady again. No need for that.

He holds it out to her.

“This may not seem important to you,” she says, “but this is more than just us being fussy about the uniform. You represent the Musketeers and all that that stands for. It’s more than just shooting or swordplay or guarding. It’s about a particular type of honour. You understand me?”

“Yes, Madame.”

“Right. And it’s more than that again,” she says, warming to her theme, reaching to take it off him. “It’s about the fundamentals of…” she shakes it at him “of materials.”

He frowns.

Her mouth quirks sideways, brows level. “Do you know what I was before this?”

“You worked for The Queen.”

She’s taken aback. “I still… I’m. Well. Anyway, before _that_ , I was a seamstress.”

He nods, attentive. Then wavers into stillness. “Right…”

“Right, and the thing about being a seamstress – or a haberdasher, or a weaver, or a potter, or whatever, is… No matter how good your sewing, it’s the cloth that makes the garment.”

She looks at him. He looks a _huh?_ at her, though he’s trying, she sees, to be keen.

“If you don’t have the underlying principles in place, you can’t learn anything more elaborate.”

He blinks.

“What did, what do your parents do?”

“Cooper, Madame. Laundress.”

She shrugs. “You can’t make barrels without knowing about how wood works, where it bends and breaks.”

He shrugs back, looks distant, bordering on sullen. He must have stepped quite far from his family to find himself here, she reflects. Must have hated coopering. Well enough.

“What’ve they taught you, here?” she asks.

He shrugs again. Then screws his face into something more alert. “Marching, Madame. Drilling. Wi’. Wi _th_ wooden swords an’ and that.” Rejecting his accent as well.

“They tell you why?”

He shakes his head. She curses Fabron for a stubborn idiot and resolves to go after him personally to persuade him to train the cadets. She starts considering strategy and tactics – starting with concern and flattery, maybe; whatever softness and knight’s moves Treville will have missed, assuming all good men as straight as him, the fool.

She wonders, for a moment, who will teach these boys the other things they need to know. She realises she does not know who mends their clothing when they’re on campaign, who cuts their hair, who shaves them. The regiment has taken its field medics with them (minus one, of course), along with a proper surgeon, and she’s seen Porthos mend armour before. Does he darn socks as well? Or does the treasury pay for new socks to be sent out to them by the wagonload?

She shakes her head to clear it. She will teach these boys those skills herself, if she has to, and bring someone in to pick from among them the likely lads who’ll take on the medical duties.

And now she, God bless her, is going to have to fill the gap in this gawping boy’s brain.

“You march to learn discipline,” she says, “and because you’ll have to cover miles together on foot while on campaign.” He frowns. “No, not all of you will have horses, and not all campaigns use them.”

His face makes an “Oh” as he starts to make connections.

“Imagine a hundred men straggling along for twenty miles, each at their own pace.”

“I suppose so, Madame,” and she can see his mind working over it.

“You drill with with wooden implements why?”

He pulls a wry face before he can stop himself. “So we dun… don’t hurt ourselves, Madame.”

“Not too badly and not before time.”

“Huh?”

“Don’t say ‘huh?’ – never let anyone know you’re that foolish.”

It’s out before she can stop it and he’s stung, then draws himself back up into that picture of keenness.

“Better.” She gazes at him, stern but not unkindly, and she knows fine well where – who – she got that from. “So: why do you think you drill – step, lunge, retreat, etc.?”

He screws his face up, opens his mouth and draws breath as if to say “Don’t know, Madame,” catches her slightly scornful look and subsides.

“Take your time,” she tells him. “I’d rather you worked this out for yourself.”

“I suppose,” he says, after a while, “it’s so we don’t have to think so much on them basics, when it comes to real fighting.”

“Right…”

“Like the marching.”

“Exactly.”

“All right,” he says, emboldened, “so why does my badge have to be just so?”

She lets her eyes become hooded, cocks an eyebrow, sighs, shortly.

“You represent the Musketeers when you go out into the world. Everything about you must say that you are disciplined and knowledgeable. We are more than ordinary soldiers – we go where others don’t, to uncover criminals and uphold the peace, sometimes in places where our only weapons are our wits. If you _want_ someone to think you foolish, then by all means wear your badge upside-down and clumsily tied, but don’t think to represent the regiment for long.

“Apprenticeships are earned, but commissions are bestowed, and you’ll need to stand above your peers to earn the King’s eye if you’ve no patron already. If you want that badge to one day be sash, pauldron, cloak, you need to learn everything you’re taught here, and then add some dash of your own.”

She pulls the cloth tight with an emphatic jerk of her hands, and only realises how stridently she’s been speaking, latterly, when she hears the air of the mess ringing after.

Refusing to look chagrined, she puts her hands on her hips and glares at him. “Well?”

“That.” He swallows. “That makes sense, Madame.”

“Why did you join?”

“I. I wanted to, to get away, to…”

She says, more softly: “Why did you want to join the _Musketeers_?” She quirks her mouth at him. “And don’t say it’s because you look better in blue.”

“Hah,” he looks startled at his own bark of a laugh. “I. I’d heard the stories, Madame. You have to be… to be _amazing_ to join. I didn’t just want to be a soldier, I…” He ducks his head. “I wanted to be a _hero_.”

“All soldiers can be heroes, son. All people, for that matter. Why _here?_ ”

He scratches his neck. “I heard the stories, in’t it. Uh. I heard. Musketeers are the bravest, and the noblest. Not like,” he swipes at the air, “like _nobles_ , but like, what that…” he ducks his head again, then raises it, “what it _should_ mean. You know?”

“I do.” She reaches out, pats his arm and, with a few deft flicks, undoes the badge and hands it to him. “There you go.”

“Huh? Uh. I mean: why’d you do that?”

“It’s a test,” she tells him. “Everything’s a test here, for you. Can you re-tie it how I did it?”

“Wi’ one hand, mistress?!” He’s appalled.

“Oh yeah,” she broadens her own accent to meet his, “that’s right. Not just bravery and feats of arms, but ingenuity and all.” She narrows her eyes at him, her voice following. “That’s cleverness. Inventiveness. What can you do when you’ve got less?” She crosses her arms. “Go on.”

Screwing up his face he nevertheless lifts his arms, then looks back at her, and she sees the smallest change come over him. “Madame, could you show me again, please? I was too busy listening to what you were saying about the Musketeers. It were… was… _amazing_.”

“If you’re trying to flatter me,” she tells him, “try harder, but admitting your ignorance to one who’s got the time to teach you is no bad thing. Right then.” She steps him through it. “See?”

“Yes.” And makes to skip back, presumably heading for the door, not reckoning on her speed, gasping as her right hand takes his left wrist in a grip he’s surprised to find he can’t shake off.

“Nice try. Take it off and put it back on yourself. If you impress me, I might even show you sometime how to get out of a hold like this.”

He scowls, but it’s good-natured enough, unpicking the knot once released and slowly unfurling it from himself. Frowning hard in concentration, tongue tucked into the corner of his lips, he slowly, with a couple of slips, re-ties the badge, using his teeth to take the strain of the single hand, and shows it to her. She hitches it up a little, drawing his sleeve down taut under it.

“Good enough. For now,” she says, and twinkles at him.

“Madame d’Artagnan?”

“Yes?”

“Can I ask…” He takes a breath and blunders on. “Why did _you_ join?”

“Eh?”

“The Musketeers.” He’s very earnest now. “I mean, I’ve heard about…” he catches her expression and mumbles. “Sorry.”

“No, that’s. No. You’re alright. Just. Look, just get on, will you? You’ve got duties, haven’t you?”

“Yes, Madame,” and a little light has gone from him.

“Well, best get to them.”

“Yes, Madame d’Artagnan.” And he’s gone.

“Bugger,” she says, apropos of no one thing in particular, if she’d been asked to name the reason.


	2. Messy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Embedded letter images will have a text version in the end notes.
> 
> If the images are too small, please let me know and I will try to fix.

Might as well see what this parcel is. Setting aside the letter (what on _Earth_ is _she_ doing writing to _me?!_ ), she draws her working knife and slits the smooth, white twine, sealed almost ostentatiously with that familiar mark, to draw back the cloth that wraps what turns out to be a beautifully turned-out wooden box – walnut, she thinks, and kept very well, smooth as the silk that held it and inlaid with brass fleur-des-lis to match the gleaming hinges and catch. Roughly the length of her forearm and half that wide and slightly less than that deep, deep, there’s a fair amount of weight to it, but it barely rattles when she shakes it gently. An old trick of her father’s, she thinks with a small smile, to test and probe any wrapped gift or mysterious bundle until everyone in the room would be begging him to open it before he, with a sly smile, would open it towards himself and gasp dramatically before showing the rest of them.

Occupied with such fond reminiscences, she absently flips the hasp and opens the box, feeling her eyes widen on a gasp of her own as her mind finally makes sense of the shapes inside.

“Holy Mother of God,” she breathes.

 _That’s_ exactly _what it looks like._

What.

_What?!_

She slams the box shut and looks all about her. Coming through the sun-dusty air beyond the empty mess are sounds of inexpert drilling and clumsy, shout-corrected sparring. Further away, the lad who reckoned himself “good enough” as a drummer is practising his strokes. Not far away enough is the lad who clearly picked the short straw on the bugle. She imagines Athos, clear as daylight, telling her that they all drew the short straw, in that case, his dark, dry tones murmuring on the slightest twist of mouth and eye. D’Artagnan smirks beside him, golden and brown, a slant of love on the bright air, and she wants to shout: “Where have you been? Why won’t you _fucking write?!_ ” but she knows it’s just delayed, that’s all, that she’d have heard any reports of…

Of…

She opens her eyes, and they fall on the box again. She resists the urge to peek inside again – she knows absolutely what’s in there, in lightning bolt clarity.

“There had better,” she mutters through her teeth, rummaging under the languid silk for the accompanying letter “be a _very_ good explanation for this…”  


Constance closes her eyes for a moment, sees again the contents of the box, its… _their_ livid, beautifully crafted curves, their purpose barely contained by their moulded, velvet-lined surroundings.

“Holy Mother of God,” she murmurs again, holds the flat of her palm against her chest for a moment, gathering strength, before opening her eyes again and plunging – oh hell – back into the letter.  


Constance pauses, swallowing against her suddenly dry, swollen throat. She tries to read on, fragments swimming before her eyes  


“Holy hell,” she whispers, hand to her throat.

“Of course…!”

“Oh, dear Christing _fuck_ ,” she mutters, using one of Old Serge’s favourite curses, which usually comes somewhere between something burning or breaking and someone getting ladles thrown at them with surprising accuracy.  


  
“Well,” she says, gathering herself, shoving the letter into her pocket and wrapping the box back in its silk coverlet. “Well. I never.”

There is, of course, no return address. She knows that An– The Queen knows how to reach Ninon when she needs – or wants to, presumably; oh Heavens, don’t think that! And Constance sways for a moment, eyes closed, cursing her vividly visual imagination for the umpteenth time.

She won’t be begging anyone for Ninon de Larroque’s latest address – though she’s fairly sure it’s somewhere in England these days – anytime soon, and certainly not when she might be asked the reason for it. With the idea of saving her own blushes (she’s suspected for a while that nothing in her rooms at the Palace is entirely secure when she’s away from them), she decides to stow this in d’Artagnan’s room – or, at least, what will be d’Artagnan’s room when he returns – tucked well away under the bed until such time as she can think what to do with these alarming devices.

_You know fine well what you can do with them._

Oh, hush. Now is not the time.

_Then when?_

Unable to answer such a penetrating question, she scurries upstairs, descending moments later with her hauteur restored.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ### Text of Images
> 
> #### Text of First Part of The Accompanying Letter:
> 
> Dearest Constance,
> 
> Or would you prefer “Madame d’Artagnan”? That seems terribly formal to me, and I was never fond of calling someone by the name of a man who has laid claim to her.
> 
> Constance it is, then, if you’ll permit me. And I hear that you are occupied of late with the shaping of young minds. I find myself entirely unsurprised and very much in favour, though grieving, of course, that the times are still not fit to see young women enter the ranks of soldiery, should they so choose. No matter – all in good time, I’m sure.
> 
> I have long wanted to send you a tangible gift, something to help ease the tedium of your time – first when you were with that, well, let us call him an unsuitable man for your energy and affections, and then while you were focused at the Palace, though I suspect your energy was far better bestowed in that period. But now, with your comfort and support gone – and, to my memory, a very passionate and accomplished partner, far fitter for your time and energy than the one who came before – I feel that now is the time to share with you something that has brought me great joy and comfort in the past.
> 
> #### Text of Second Part of Accompanying Letter:
> 
> In French they’re known as godemiches. Well, the one on the left, the more anatomically complete one, to be more technically specific, is a godemiche, from the Latin: gaude mihi. We did not have time, alas, to expand upon your Latin while you were with me, so: “gaude mihi” means “please me”, and they have a wonderful history, these objects. The most sought-after, in Antiquity, were made, of course, by the women of Ancient Greece – and more recently, the only profession of craft a woman was allowed to hold was that of a leatherworker, which allowed them a great deal of scope for realism, of course.
> 
> #### Text of Third Part of Accompanying Letter:
> 
> … the name “olisbos” which means “to slip” or “to glide” …
> 
> #### Text of Fourth Part of Accompanying Letter:
> 
> … designed for travel, the box created with this in mind…
> 
> #### Text of Fifth Part of Accompanying Letter:
> 
> … rosewood, which is, of course…
> 
> #### Text of Sixth Part of Accompanying Letter:
> 
> … and so, dear Constance, I give these beloved possessions over to your care, to use as you see fit.
> 
> #### Text of Final Part of Accompanying Letter:
> 
> With greatest affection, always,
> 
> _Nx_
> 
> ### Historical Note
> 
> So. Godemiches/ [olisbos](http://en.antiquitatem.com/olisbos-dildo-sexuality-antiquity) are real things. And everything Ninon said about them is based on the research I did. And WOW, what a wild ride _that_ was! Many of my starting points came from [this brilliant blog post](https://jessnevins.com/blog/?p=4). Turns out women have been owning their sexuality for a LOT longer than they’re given credit for [shakes fists at Victorian medical establishment], and sex toys have been a thing for millennia. It is, in fact, only relatively recently that men have been making and selling penetrative sex toys aimed at women (including clockwork contraptions for the vibrations dontcha know), and yes – the ones made by women were apparently much more sought-after. If you can get hold of a copy, the fab book "[Mothers and Daughters of Invention](https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=uRJt7QqA7GEC&pg=PA210&lpg=PA210&dq=17th+century+godemiche&source=bl&ots=l6viFhfocj&sig=lLUGPeB67ynk9faL2x09onFFt_A&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjGvbiEk97dAhUkCMAKHbMjCPAQ6AEwBXoECAQQAQ#v=onepage&q=17th%20century%20godemiche&f=false)" will tell you much of what you need to know about all that (and about every area of life where women inventors have kicked arse, but enough feminist proselytising from me… for now…).
> 
> The travel godemiches are also a real, actual thing. Behold:
> 
>  
> 
> [Content warning: picture of sex toys (not in action!)](http://jessnevins.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/godemiches.jpg)
> 
>  
> 
> [Content warning: picture of sex toy held in someone’s hands (but not in action!).](https://pegsandtails.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/18c_cocus_dildos_04a.jpg)
> 
>  
> 
> Ninon’s (well, Constance’s now!) is in a much prettier box with moulded interior and purple velvet lining, is all, and is a lighter shade of rosewood; imagine something a wee bit more of a warm, golden/ coppery brown. There you go – I thought you might be able to, somehow…


End file.
